Change
by jenwen1988
Summary: Post-ep for Pursuit. Elliot and Olivia struggle to deal with Sonya's death. Things have been shifting and changing for some time, how much more can they take.
1. Silence and Noise

**AN: Hey guys, after watching Pursuit I couldn't help but start writing a fic! So if you haven't watched it yet don't read! Everything from before Pursuit is fair game!******

**This is what I shall call my first 'proper' fic in that any that I have attempted previously were rushed, incredibly out of character and basically fell prey to every sin of the fanfiction world. I hope this is better.******

**Thanks to the lovely MissMandi who has offered to be my Beta throughout!******

**The title is currently Change but it's a WIP at the moment and may (funnily enough) change. Any suggestions for a title are welcome!******

**Constructive criticism is always welcome.**

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Chapter 1-Silence and Noise.

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Silence.

It invades every room of her apartment; it washes over her from head to toe. Its grip is tight and she attempts to hold on to it just as firmly as it grasps her.

She's comfortable with silence; in silence there is less pain. There are no sobs of heartache, screams of agony; the silence and its associated nothingness comfort her. She hasn't uttered a sound since she left the prison earlier in the evening. There's nothing to say. He had waited for her outside Rikers, driven her home as if it were any other case. Only it wasn't and if she's honest with herself she's not sure why. He'd asked her if she was okay, if she wanted him to keep her company. To verbalise her feelings made them real and she wouldn't do that – it was her grief, her guilt, her cross to bear. She had offered him a stiff smile and quietly slipped out of the car seeking the solace of her apartment.

The harrowing details of Adams' crimes wreak havoc in her mind. It's days like today when she doubts her ability to fight and protect. She thinks of the victims she has helped over the years, and for what? In helping one she feels like she sacrifices another. She knows that it's not possible to save them all, and that's what tears her up. Enough isn't enough. It never will be.

It's that thought that breaks through the dam of emotions locked within her chest, and so the silence ends. Her sobs echo through her apartment. What was once peaceful, calm and quiet is now the soundtrack of despair.

She can't be sure why exactly she cries. She encounters a whirlpool of emotions, each coming to the surface for a split second and then just as quickly being replaced by another. She cries for the forty-four victims, for Sonya, her guilt, her loss, her mother and her inability to be a saviour to them all.

Though her relationship with Sonya was never that of 'girlfriends', they had a mutual respect and admiration towards the other for their hard-line attitude. They knew how to work a case together, how to spur the other in to action and both knew how to rile the other to wound, scar and inflict maximum pain.

She cries for Sonya but if she's honest, for the first time in her life, she cries for herself.

''How long did you search for the man who raped your mother?''

The words hang in the air, twist in her gut.

Sonya had known it would sting, her words carefully chosen to inflict maximum damage. Olivia had watched her, in the instant the words left her mouth Olivia had seen it. A moment of self satisfaction, Sonya had wanted to damage, to destroy and she had succeeded.

Olivia tries, everyday she attempts to battle her past, to fight her demons but when it comes down to it she knows they will always catch up with her. The ghosts of the past will forever haunt her and so her tears continue. They fall down her face and her breath catches in her throat.

Once again the silence returns when a gentle rap on her apartment door sends her back into her shell, her armour on and her tears now dry.

Silence reigns once more.

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Noise

They're different now. He knows that, and he assumes she does as well. Where she likes silence, he thrives on noise. In silence there is too much opportunity to think, to reflect on what has been said, what has been done and more importantly what has not. He runs from it, if he thinks for too long the guilt consumes him and he's not sure that he can take much more.

They've both come too far now. What was once a crack has over time become a fault line, he knows a quake is coming, and soon. The ground on which they stand as partners has been rocky for too long; the quake building beneath the surface is ready to upturn what little stability they have left. It's already too late to rectify; like tectonic plates their relationship has been shifting and changing for as long as he can remember. Or so he likes to pretend. But in this moment of solitude as he sits in her doorway, he knows the exact moment when their paths changed and became intertwined.

Gitano.

That moment in the bus depot he knew that things had changed. He just didn't have the foresight to see how much it would affect him. It was never a choice, to save her or to save the boy. Given the same situation he'd make the same mistake again. He would save her every time. No questions asked.

The guilt still suffocates him; he had rounded on her, made her feel at fault. Told her that she needed to do her job and so she left him, and by Christ he's not sure he has ever felt such acute pain.

When he had separated from Kathy he felt pain, he felt sadness and yet he can't recall a pain as severe as knowing Olivia had gone. That she had made the choice for them both, she ran to save them. He knows as he sits in her hallway that had she not made the decision they would have long since tumbled into the abyss. They've been teetering on the edge for too long, one wrong move and they're sure to fall. He doesn't know if they'll make it if they do.

He still fails to understand why she came back. She made the choice to leave. She decided she didn't need him and so the anger bubbles, he feels it most when it's silent. He quickly inhales and remembers; remembers that she returned to him and he is sure that he has to be the luckiest bastard alive because as much as he needs her, he doesn't deserve her.

Christ, he hates the silence.

He listens. He hopes for noise, anything, to distract his attention.

The silence lingers.

He's a bastard. He liked Sonya. They argued, disagreed more often than not, but she was ballsy and he admired that. Yet in her passing he cannot conjure up the emotions that he knows he should feel. He's comfortably numb. He should feel grief, he should feel sorrow, he can only assume that these emotions will eventually present themselves and when they do he will mourn, silently and stoically but at the present moment he feels nothing other than relief. Relief that it wasn't Olivia.

He had bargained with God. In those few seconds when the call came over the radio, he had negotiated with his Creator, 'Please don't let it be her. In that moment he had willingly sacrificed Fin, Alicia and Sonya, and if he is honest with himself, he didn't care who it was as long as it wasn't her. He couldn't take it. He had lost her twice before, he was sure the third would kill him.

As a Catholic he knows it was wrong, God is to be feared, His word is law. Mere mortal should not try to alter or influence it and yet he has bargained with God more times than he wishes to remember.

The car crash.

Kathleen.

Gitano.

He was raised to worship and to fear God, but now the threat of eternal damnation for attempting to reason with His divine power seems a small price to pay for her safety.

Forgive me Father for I have sinned.

He feels it now as he reflects on everything that occurred at the Church – a burning so severe in his chest he is positive it will engulf him. And then he is calm because he remembers: It wasn't her. She is safe. She is still his.

The silence remains.

He strains to listen; he's desperate for any hint of movement to reassure him that she's in there and is as okay as the situation will allow. Through the hardwood door he hears it, the low, ragged catch of her breath in her throat. He can count on one hand the number of times he has heard her make that sound and yet he knows immediately that she is crying. He realises that he would welcome the silence once more if it would end her pain. He's a selfish bastard; in all his thinking about her he never thinks of her.

He quickly moves to his feet and turns to face the door. He pauses before he knocks, for he can still hear her muffled cries. For the first time in living memory he wishes for silence.

He knocks and waits.

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	2. Space and Proximity

She knows it's him at the door. There's no one else it could be. She had told him, not through words but through her actions that she needed to be alone. She seeks space, a chance to catch her breath, to think, to feel.

He doesn't understand. She didn't imagine that he would. Where she desires solace he seeks company. They shouldn't fit, but they do; that's their problem. Two halves of one whole. Recently it has become increasingly difficult to establish where she begins and he ends. They're polar opposites and at the same time, the perfect match. It's wrong and she knows it. They're fighting a losing battle; she only prays that she doesn't fall first.

As she reaches for the chain she can feel it – her chest is tight, her lungs constrict and she struggles to inhale. His presence is suffocating. He consumes her and she's not sure that there is a feeling as terrifying as how she feels when she's around him. She has never needed anyone, yet she is dependent on him.

He has changed her.

As much as she needs him, she hates him. She hates his inability to leave her, to let her get through this on her own. And yet she doesn't hate him at all, and that's what is destroying her.

She needs his comfort, but she wants to crawl in to him, to mould her body to every crevice of his but there are rules and she is more than aware of them. She can't do it; he's not hers to hold and so she prays for space.

What she wants and what she needs are not the same thing and she will be damned if she becomes_that_ woman.

She reaches for the lock and briefly their eyes meet through the peep hole. It still amazes her, they can be physically separated and yet one always manages to find the other.

He has always needed companionship. He doesn't welcome his own company and unlike her he has never truly been alone. Like the silence, solitude breaks him. There is too much to consider, too much to dwell on and so he has always preferred company.

He feels like he has been waiting in her doorway for an eternity when it clicks open. The door slowly retreats from him and the sense of relief that he had hoped for does not materialize when he sees her.

He had heard her, in the silence he had listened to her cries and yet seeing the pain that has been etched into every line of her face is that much worse. Her pain becomes his. He is smothered by it, consuming him and dragging him ever closer to the precipice. The need to hold her is almost unbearable; he wonders how he has controlled himself, how in twelve years he has held her only twice. His arms had offered her comfort when Sonya died and shown thanks when she had saved the life of his wife and youngest child.

He can't reach for her, he has no claim to her and he's almost certain that if he holds her now he won't be able to let go.

He's not _that_ man and more importantly he will not make her _that_woman.

They have always prided themselves on their innate ability to read each other. With a single glance they can decipher what the other is thinking, what their next move will be. In the realm of work little has changed, yet in the course of a single afternoon their personal relationship has shifted once more. Neither truly know where they stand; each struggles to understand what the other needs or wants.

It's dangerous now.

They remain in the doorway, a silent standoff. Their eyes dance over each other but never quite meet; it's strange and verging on uncomfortable. Neither can comprehend the most recent shift in dynamic. He had given her a ride home earlier this afternoon, but that was necessity and his being here now is not and that's what is different.

He had comforted her – held her in the church hallway soothed her – and offered his support. He had been the poster boy for what a partner should be, but he is here, now, in her doorway.

And it is so far removed from the role of partners.

Without a sound, he slips past her into her sitting room. She closes the door and falls into step behind him. He perches on the sofa, and she knows that if she puts herself in such close proximity to him it will be her undoing, so she opts for the bay window.

Neither speaks as they sit. No looks are shared, no tears are cried.

They have never needed words before, yet now it is everything unsaid that causes the chasm between them to grow ever wider.

He watches her. She is curled up, her body pressed tight against the window pane. She looks small and fragile and he hates that. He hates that it makes his hands itch to touch her, to hold her, to protect her. He shifts and leans forward, his head rests in his hands. He feels it now, she is too much for him yet he will never have enough.

She feels like she has been staring out the window for hours, rationally she knows it is more like minutes but his presence is too much. It unsettles her and she hates that. Elliot's gaze burns into her skin, she hasn't looked at him but she knows. She can feel his eyes moving over her, analyzing her every breath, her every move.

She hates that what was once easy has now become a struggle.

Silence, noise, solace, companionship; it's all up in the air now.

And then she speaks…


End file.
